EXCLUSIVE:Eugene Jarecki, helmer of the 2005 Peabody- and Sundance-winning documentary Why We Fight, hits the road all the way to the Cannes Film Festival for his next film. In Promised Land, which will have its world premiere in Cannes’ Special Screening section May 20, Jarecki takes Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls Royce on a music-filled (sometimes literally) road trip across the U.S., picking up passengers famous and not-so famous as they travel through an America at a crossroads in the midst of the 2016 election that has upended everything.

David Kuhn

Of course, also just like in America right now there are speed bumps (and breakdowns) along the way. “If the car was working great it just wouldn’t be the same, would it?” says one voice behind a popped hood, adding, “The car is a metaphor for Elvis is a metaphor for the human condition.”

Jarecki wrote, directed and also produced the pic alongside Christopher St. John and David Kuhn; Barbara Biemann, David Atlan Jackson, Jean-Baptiste Babin and Joel Thibout are exec producers.